Second Chance
by AndromedaStarr
Summary: AU: Snape returns from the dead to perform a final service for the Powers That Be. Snape/OC. Warnings for a probable Mary Sue.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This was written a couple years ago and I haven't edited it since, so I'm reasonably sure my writing may be questionable, Anaia is a Mary Sue, Snape is probably OOC and all that jazz. Everything here that isn't J. K. Rowling's is mine, except the Mayhem Manual, which I believe I read about in a truly excellent fanfic called Blood Ties, definitely find and read it. My apologies for borrowing it as a plot device, if you are or know the author and she has a problem with that, please let me know and I'll take down the fic.

Otherwise, reviews are welcome.

* * *

><p>A knock sounded on the door. Or rather, a bang, as though someone were pounding on it with clenched fists and all their might. The solid wood trembled, and as the roar of the snowstorm swelled outside, the banging intensified.<p>

"Merlin's beard," Snape muttered, and flicked his wand. The door didn't move, but all at once a wet, bedraggled, and very cold Remus Lupin was standing in his living room.

"Thank you," the werewolf said, and dried himself magically. "Why the devil is it snowing in July?" He sat down on the couch. "Do you like this absurd weather?"

"It's not July here." Snape twirled his wand and plucked two glasses of elf-made wine from midair. "Here, since you are evidently not going to leave."

"Thanks." Lupin sipped at the wine and closed his eyes, no doubt enjoying the quiet comfort of Snape's humble abode. He looked incredibly different; the tiredness was gone, and the grey from his hair. No wild-eyed, shabbily dressed man sat on the couch. No, the Remus Lupin currently taking advantage of Snape's unprecedented hospitality was clad in fine robes, relaxed, serene, and twenty-five.

"You were saying?" Snape prompted, turning the page of his book. Mother's milk, why was he reading about Quidditch? As the thought crossed his mind, the text smoothly shifted to something referencing manticores. Well, it would do.

"I've come with a suggestion," Lupin said, and when that didn't seem to have the desired effect, he added, "From the Powers That Be."

Snape lowered the book. One look into that young, guileless face told him Lupin wasn't joking. He shut the tome. "Continue."

"There's trouble," Lupin said simply.

"He's dead."

"Yes. But he's not the only Dark wizard in existence that could possibly cause a spot of bother."

Snape arched an eyebrow. "How big a spot?"

"Big enough."

"And its name?"

Lupin spoke two words, and Snape's blood ran cold – or it pretended to, anyway. He could never be sure what was real and what wasn't in this place. Not that it mattered. After all, dead was dead.

"What do they want us to do?" Snape asked eventually.

"Not us," Lupin said. "You. I'd be no use."

Snape refrained from asking why. "All right. Me, then. What do they want me to do?"

Lupin spoke two more words.

Snape closed his eyes. "You cannot be serious."

"Do I look like I'm having you on?"

Outside, the snowstorm had attained epic proportions. The wind gave an inhuman howl, and Snape glanced around his cosy den. That was what it was, really, more an animal's place of refuge than a standard home. But it was peace, and it was comfort, and wasn't he entitled to those things after all he'd been through?

"And why wouldn't you be of any use?" he asked.

"She wouldn't listen to me."

"She?"

"Yes, she. Born at the new moon to left-handed parents, one Dark and the other mad, possessed of a stupendously magical mansion –"

"No." Snape was shaking his head. "She was the bane of my existence."

"She was the only thing that ever mattered to you besides Albus and the woman you could never have," Lupin said softly. "You saved each other's lives, as I recall, and –"

"And then never spoke to each other again," Snape finished. "Yes, I quite remember."

No. He could not. To give up everything he had here, to tear himself from somewhere he could see the emerald sparkle of –

"When?" he asked.

"Now," Lupin said, watching him. "I can get you to within a mile of the manor, you'll have to walk the rest on foot. And you know there can be no contact after you leave."

"So what –"

"I've told you all I know." Lupin lifted his shoulders helplessly. "Look at it as a second chance of sorts."

"Bollocks," Snape said flatly. "I arsed it up the first time, Merlin only knows what I –"

"Severus." Lupin reached out and took his hands. "Time to go. Good luck."

Snape shut his eyes. "Get it over with."

A soft chuckle. "Hang on. I don't think this will feel very pleasant."

Dull, aching pain suffused Snape. He had never felt it before, but he could guess what it was. There was a snapping, grinding noise as bones formed, and his teeth clicked into being. Limbs flexed as tendons grew, and then a thick rippling as muscle was layered on. That hurt a great deal. But the most painful thing was the first agonizing beat of his heart.

Snape gasped, and his chest burned as he realized he was breathing. His eyes sprang open, and then black hair fell into existence over them as he tumbled facefirst into the snow.

It took a few moments to get accustomed to having a body. He hadn't been dead all that long, but it had been long enough to forget about the encumbrances of a physical form. Snape pushed himself up on his hands, spitting out snow and biting his tongue in the process, and climbed awkwardly to his newly made bare feet. Well, at least he wasn't naked.

He was standing in a wilderness of snow. Flat whiteness stretched away from him in every direction. After a moment of searching his brain, he decided this was Siberia. Which he was grateful for, because the flat and the white made it easy to find the huge black monstrosity that was Zephyrine Manor.

Snape, shivering violently, began to stumble through the snow. Remus Lupin, he had no doubt, was laughing.


	2. Chapter 2

Zephyrine Manor was enormous, made entirely of black obsidian, and resident to three creatures. Normally, Snape would have been amenable to seeing none of those creatures, but today he had no choice and he knew which one would answer the door. Fingernails blue and toes just about frozen, he mounted the stairs and pressed the flat of one hand against the smooth, warm stone of the door.

"Only one person ever announced his presence like that," murmured a lilting voice, "and he is dead."

"Not dead," Snape forced out through chattering teeth.

"Interesting."

The black slab that looked to be the door split down the middle and bent inward, and Snape nearly fell into the sudden heat of the hall. The heat, he saw, was due to the full-grown Antipodean Opaleye that was crouched before him, bellowing a lengthy barrage of flame into the upper reaches of the mansion. The firelight glittered on its iridescent scales, blinding him, but he was infinitely thankful for the immediate thaw the dragonfire brought.

"Well," she said. "This is a surprise."

She was barely noticeable, standing in front of the dragon, just a small dark line in front of a massive pile of shining scales. She looked exactly as he remembered her: long black hair, impossibly otherworldly pale blue eyes, a cast to her fine features that reminded him sharply of Sirius Black. Come to think of it, she looked a little like Bellatrix as well, touched with similar arrogance.

"Yes," he agreed. "It is." He glanced down at himself. "How do I look?"

"Decidedly not dead."

"How old?"

She favoured him with a long look. "Thirty."

He whistled. "Been a while since I was thirty."

"Been a while since you were alive too." She flicked her wand at him and he was suddenly more properly attired, complete with boots. "I'll hear the explanation in ten minutes in my study. Consider Rastalan yours for the moment."

Snape eyed the dragon, which was far larger than any he'd seen before – abnormally large for one of its breed, probably that way due to some enchantment or other – and which was glaring at him with one half-shut, pupil-less eye.

She saw his look. "Nyx will not harm you." She ran a long-fingered hand down the dragon's no doubt searing hide. "Ten minutes, Severus."

"Thank you, Anaia."

* * *

><p>Anaia Zephyrine was the daughter of Bartholomew and Aeoliah Zephyrine. Bartholomew was famous for having been an enthusiastic practitioner of Dark magic, but he was even more famous for having been a traitor. He had betrayed his friends, his parents, even his wife. He had sold them to Darkness in exchange for more powerful spells, for secrets he had not been wise or strong enough to use.<p>

And Aeoliah...well, she had been Dark, but even more than that she had been mad, even before Bartholomew's glaring error of treating her like a doll instead of a human. That was the error that caused his death. When she learned of his betrayal, she revealed knowledge of even Darker spells than his. When the battle was over, Bartholomew was unrecognizable, and two years later Aeoliah died in Azkaban, a victim of her husband's curse. Anaia was all of fifteen.

Currently, at thirty, she was untouchable by the wizarding world, marked as a Zephyrine both by her affinity for dragons (the Zephyrines had long held dragons as familiars, the only magical family to ever do so) and by her mystical dwelling.

The Zephyrine manor was sentient, if that could make sense. And it moved. Every once in a while, the frequency depending on the mansion's mood, Anaia would open the door and find herself in a different part of the world. Today it was Siberia, but tomorrow it might be Paris, or the highlands of Scotland, or even Timbuktu for all anyone knew. Often it occurred that Anaia would be out in Albania attending to business, and the mansion would decide to pop over to Japan in her absence. Fortunately she knew when the mansion moved, and she could always tell the precise location. Equally fortunately, it was also invisible to Muggles, and in fact to anyone who had never been there before.

The three denizens of Zephyrine Manor were Anaia, Nyx, and the house-elf Rastalan.

* * *

><p>Rastalan was rather sizable, for a house-elf, and dressed entirely in black. As house-elves went, he looked oddly young. Silvery blue eyes, the same colour as Anaia's, peered out from beneath sweeping spikes of black hair. He appeared to have access to a wand as well, for his features had so altered since Snape had last seen him that he was now almost human. His ears were pointy, his eyes too large, but otherwise he could have been an undersized and peculiar looking wizard.<p>

"Master Snape," Rastalan said disapprovingly. He had a high, cold voice that reminded Snape chillingly of the late Dark Lord. "Mistress Anaia has commanded me to serve you. I am assured that it is only momentary."

"I regret to inform that I have in fact come to inconvenience Miss Zephyrine for some time," Snape said dryly, "but I do not expect to require much of you."

"Still, I am ordered by my mistress." Rastalan formed his face into what might have passed for a polite smile. "Is there anything you would like?"

"Directions to the study." Snape tilted his head back to examine the hall. Zephyrine Manor was more a castle than anything else, complete with dungeons. It had been quite some time since he had been there, and he couldn't remember how to find it. His gaze met the shining eye of the dragon, and he quickly averted it. "Anaia instructed me –"

"I am aware of what my mistress instructed you," Rastalan stated with more snark than house-elves were allowed to use. But nothing in the manor – nothing Anaia touched – ever confined itself to playing by the rules. "You have forgotten how to find the study?"

"I apologize for my mental confusion. I've been dead."

Rastalan's face flickered as the memory seemed to reinstate itself. "Yes. How is it that you are not?"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "I believe your mistress is entitled to that explanation before you are. Now. Take me to the study."

"Yes, master," came the drawl.

* * *

><p>The study was wide, with wooden shelves that stretched from ceiling to floor. The shelves were lined thickly with books of all shapes, sizes, and subject matter, filed in no discernible order. A large desk, made of wood so dark it was nearly black, was set before the shelves, and behind it, a quill in her hand and inkstains on her fingertips, sat Anaia.<p>

"I cannot give you my full attention, but I can hear your story," she said without preamble, and a chair appeared before the desk.

Snape cocked his head. "What is so urgent that it comes before knowing how I came back to life?"

"Preparations," she said crisply. "Speak."

"The Powers That Be sent me back."

"For?" She frowned, crossed out something. "I imagine it couldn't have been because they wished to deprive themselves of the pleasure of your company."

"To find you, and convince you to do something."

Anaia raised her head. "I beg your pardon. This is interesting." She scratched a short sentence on the untidy page before her. "Carry on."

"What preparations?" he prodded. That she still wasn't focusing on him was unimaginable.

"Wedding preparations," she said. "Didn't I tell you? I'm getting married."

Snape was stunned. More than stunned. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he might have actually said he was blown away. "Married?"

"Yes, married. Wed, if you prefer something easier to spell." She flicked a lock of long hair back from her face and wrote something else. "I'm sorry, I realize that whatever you've come to tell me must be terribly important, but I fear it has to wait until this marriage comes off."

"You are an outcast," Snape said bluntly. "Forgive my impertinence, but who is marrying you?"

"Obviously, someone equally as outcast. The name should sound familiar, I think." She looked up, and pale eyes met his. "Griswold Grindelwald."


	3. Chapter 3

"Severus."

He opened his eyes. For a moment he didn't know where he was, and then his memory returned. He glanced around the room. It was large and dark, lit only by the blue fire of sparsely located torches and the magical glow of the dragon, which was curled in a huge depression that had evidently been made for it. He was lying on a long marble table, which struck him as disturbing, and Rastalan the house-elf was standing over him.

"Severus." It was Anaia who had spoken. She was standing beside him, her hand on his forehead. "You've a raging fever, you're not well."

"I'm fine." He made a shooing gesture, and the elf leapt down from the table. Snape sat up, which made his head spin, and he realized that she was right. "I walked a mile through the snow to get here. I'm susceptible to illness like everyone else."

"This isn't the cold." She removed her hand from his forehead and showed it to him. Rising on her palm and along her fingers were angry red blisters. "That's a magical fever."

"I'm fine," Snape heard himself repeating.

Anaia swore. "Severus Snape, you are supposed to be dead, and I am untouchable. Thusly, I cannot simply stroll into St. Mungo's with you."

"I'll be all right." He tried to get up, but Rastalan poked him in the chest with a long finger and Snape's back hit the table with a thud. He hadn't realized how weak he was.

"My mistress is right," the house-elf said firmly. "You cannot leave. We will do what we can. There are spells to cure everything."

Snape knew what that meant. "You can't work Dark magic on me."

"Shut it," Anaia snapped irritably. "You were a Death Eater. This will be nothing."

"Your magic is..." He stopped, coughing. He didn't need them to exchange glances to know. He had seen the fine mist of blood droplets spray from his throat. "Your magic is Darker than..."

"Yes," she agreed. "And more effective. But first you will tell me what the Powers That Be sent you back here to get me to do."

Snape cursed inwardly. His options were dwindling along with his health. At this point, Anaia's spells were the only thing between him and seeing Lupin again. Of course, if he told her the reason he had been sent back, he would be seeing Lupin even faster.

"Grindelwald," he said. "To kill him."

Rastalan looked at Anaia, whose face never changed. She looked down at Snape for a few moments, and then she seemed to become aware of his laboured breathing and of the blood around his mouth.

"Rastalan," she said. "Take him to the west wing. Treat him and confine him. When he is lucid, call me."

* * *

><p>"Another glass?" She held up the bottle tantalizingly, watching the light filter through the bloodred wine and form shapes of dragons and chimaeras. "It'll do you good after flying through the storm."<p>

"If I could Apparate here, that would make this much easier," he said pointedly. "And yes, I'll have another, thank you."

Anaia didn't trust her hands to do the work. Wordlessly she instructed the bottle, and it shared its remaining contents precisely between two carved crystal goblets. One she took up, and the other floated gently across the room and into the slender gloved hand of Griswold Grindelwald.

"Cheers," he said, and knocked it down like so much water.

Grindelwald was exactly like and unlike his merry, brilliant grandfather. He had a sharp mind, and he could be persuasively charming when he wanted to, but it was always a performance. All show of emotion was deliberate, every movement calculated, no comment throwaway. Physically he had Gellert's laugh, he had the golden curls of hair and the arrogant good looks. But beneath that, there lay a hint of sullen, biting malcontent that Albus Dumbledore's ex best friend had never had.

"I hear you have a visitor," he said casually, easing himself into a chair and crossing one long leg over the other.

Anaia silently cursed Rastalan and his changeable loyalties. The house-elf applied himself to wherever the Darkest magic lay, and where he sensed power he was likely to also display respect. Occasionally, such respect was displayed by contradicting his mistress.

"Every now and then one does appear," she said as though the subject was of no interest. "I'd rather hear your most recent exploits than go through my limited social life."

There were gaping holes there, not the least of which was the manor's tendency to be invisible to those who had never visited it previously, but oddly, Grindelwald allowed her to change the topic. "I have something important to show you."

Anaia's grip tightened a fraction on her glass. She was unsure how many more surprises she could take. "Really?"

"Really." He reached into some unknowable place within his robes, and withdrew a small pouch of red velvet. "Do you know what this is?"

His melodrama annoyed her; it always had. She didn't even know why she was marrying him, except that her mother's portrait had commanded it and that she could not disobey Aeoliah's infrequent but erratic orders.

"No," she said, swallowing her distaste for him. "But I imagine it's important."

"Important?" He was trembling with excitement, his mineral green eyes flashing with a terrible light. "This is one of the things my grandfather searched for. You know the story of the Deathly Hallows, I expect?"

Anaia twitched before she could stop herself. "I know the story," she said. "My father could speak about the Elder Wand in his sleep. The search tormented him. He came close to it once...but he never held it in his hand. Perhaps that is a good thing."

Grindelwald hadn't listened. "This is the stone," he whispered, fingering the object in the pouch lovingly through the velvet. "This is the Resurrection Stone."

"Come off it." She laughed, but it was not right. "The story of the Hallows is exactly that. The possession of all three items will not grant you immortality. The Invisibility Cloak does not make you curse-proof."

He still wasn't listening. "My grandfather searched for the Hallows until that duel, until he was imprisoned in Nurmengard. It's sheer luck my father was born at all, because he was an accident – the result of a drunken liaison with a barmaid. Me...I was chosen. I was bred for greatness, Anaia. Do you know who my mother was?"

"No," she replied dutifully. "Who was she?"

"The Dark Lord's right-hand lieutenant," Grindelwald replied. "Bellatrix Lestrange."

"She never had children," Anaia said automatically. To her knowledge, Bellatrix had never slept with any man, and that included her husband. She had been saving herself for the Dark Lord, ever conscious to remain pure for him, in the impossible event that he would one day deign to –

"She never knew. My father, aware of his own pitiful matrilineal descent, arranged for one of the greatest and most merciless Dark witches to mother his child. A spell was done. He removed her ovaries and then...experiments. With perfect results, as you can see." He smiled beatifically. "After all, I stand before you now."

Anaia frowned. "Who carried you?"

"No one." Grindelwald looked immensely satisfied with himself. "I was formed by magic. Made in a cauldron, like the most amazing potion ever created. Certain ingredients, certain spells...and then my father lifted me from the murky depths. I was perfect, Anaia, as perfect then as I am now. The first of my kind, and the only."

"And the stone?" She had to get him off the topic of himself; as fascinating as the information was, his incessant self-absorption was giving her a headache. "How did you find it?"

"Fate." His eyes shone. "I went to Hogwarts, to look at Albus Dumbledore's tomb."

"Did you desecrate it?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "A strange question. You sound concerned."

"I admire talent. He was a clever, powerful, talented wizard. And he was your grandfather's friend, once." Anaia shrugged idly. "He fought on the wrong side, but it doesn't matter. The vendetta is over now."

Grindelwald seemed mildly mollified. "No, I didn't desecrate it. I went to think of things past. And as I was walking through the forest, I saw it. I almost didn't, hidden as it was in the grass. But I bent and picked it up...and I _knew_." His shoulders were vibrating with the energy. "I knew, Anaia, I knew what I held was what my father had sought, and my grandfather before him. I had touched what they were never able to, I had found what had eluded them so long." He probably would've continued praising himself, but there was a crack, and Rastalan stood in the centre of the room.

"Master Grindelwald," he said. "Lorcan sends word that you have visitors."

At the mention of his house-elf, Grindelwald nodded. "Ready my things." When Rastalan had disappeared, he turned to Anaia. "Have you chosen a date, my love?"

The term sounded alien coming from him, and she almost winced. "I have been busy. Matters to attend to...I have not chosen yet, no."

"If you keep delaying this, I will begin to think you do not wish to marry me," he said lightly, but there was a hardness in his tone.

"Do not think that," she whispered, and reached for him. Kissing him was torture. His mouth was cold, it was hungry but unskilled, and his hands were exceedingly insolent. By the time she pulled back, her robes had been hitched up to her thighs.

"I do not know that I can wait until I have you in the marriage bed," he murmured against the side of her face.

"You must," she said, turning away from him and twitching her robes so that they fell to the floor once again. She hated him to touch her, hated his crawling hands on her skin. "The Zephyrines take custom very seriously. I was raised to hold my virtue – admittedly, probably the only virtue I possess – until I am wed."

This was a lie. Bartholomew and Aeoliah had each had a flood of extra-marital lovers, male and female, and had decidedly not been virgins on their wedding night either. But Grindelwald would not know that, and likely would not take steps to find out.

"Very well," he said somewhat reluctantly. "I look forward to that day, my love. I look forward to it very much."

* * *

><p>"Is he gone?"<p>

"He is gone," Rastalan confirmed, and poured her a glass of wine without being asked. "You do not seem well, mistress."

"Am I ever well after he has been here?" she asked, and took a long drink of the wine. "Severus. Have you done as I asked?"

"I have. He is recovering. He has had nightmares, and has called your name in his sleep."

Anaia didn't bother to hide her surprise. "He has? Why didn't you tell me?"

Rastalan refrained from answering. He was probably the only house-elf in history who could not just shift his loyalties as he pleased, but also circumvent a direct order.

"I am aware of your feelings towards Severus Snape," she said, "but he saved my life in the past."

"You do not owe him!"

"True and yet irrelevant. He saved my life. I owe him nothing but respect. Do you know what respect is, Rastalan? Can you find it in you to respect someone?"

The house-elf dipped his head. "I respect you."

"Only when it suits you." Anaia rubbed her head, and sighed. "I'm sorry. My father did terrible things to you, and your own curiosity has taken you further into Dark magic than many humans have gone."

"It makes me better able to assist you, mistress." Rastalan paused. "Why do you obey her?"

Anaia knew what he was talking about – the commands of her mother's portrait. She kept it hidden in the dungeon, draped in heavy black cloth, but every now and then she felt compelled to go talk to it. And inevitably the portrait would suggest something foolish and dangerous, and Anaia would be powerless to resist.

"Ordinary house-elves," she said, "cannot deny their masters. If you were ordinary, I could order you to stab yourself in the eye with a fork, and you would be obliged to do it. I have a similar obligation to the portrait. I cannot explain it, and I do not know how it came about – undoubtedly something Dark my father was experimenting with – but I am bound to obey her demands as you should be bound to obey mine."

"I do obey yours," Rastalan said defensively, and then added, "Mostly."

"I can understand why the Powers That Be would want Griswold dead," Anaia mused, absently finishing her wine, "but why send Severus?"

Rastalan provided the answer. "You would listen to no one else."

"I don't care a whit about Griswold," she objected. "Why would I resist killing him?"

"You're resisting now," the house-elf pointed out, "but likely from the familial need to be contrary rather from any good reason."

She looked at him, amused. He looked eerily human, sitting on the table and kicking his dangling feet. "Were you ever a normal house-elf?"

For the first time, Rastalan looked uncomfortable. "I am forbidden to discuss my origins."

"I've never asked you this before?"

He shook his head. "I cannot talk about it. Ancient enchantments..."

Anaia slid down onto the floor, looking up at him, and studied his face in great detail. Black hair, like hers. Blue eyes, like hers. A certain slant to his features. "Griswold wasn't born," she said quietly. "He was created, made in a cauldron from parts of his father and Bellatrix Lestrange. You're something similar, aren't you?"

Rastalan shifted. "I..."

"That's why you don't have to obey me. You do it when it pleases you, when you think it's right. You have judgement of your own. Meaning you're not a house-elf at all...or not completely." Anaia closed her eyes. "Merlin. I'm the image of my father, and so are you. You're a half-breed."

"Not entirely human, not entirely house-elf. I used Dark magic with the wand left to me by your – our – father to make myself more human. There's still some improvement to be made, but I'm almost there." He wrapped his arms around himself miserably. "Cast out by humans and house-elves alike. I know how you feel."

Anaia wasn't sure what she felt. Her house-elf was her half-brother, probably created, like Griswold, in a cauldron after some insane experimentation. And who knew what Bartholomew had done to the newly created Rastalan before taking him into the family service?

"Well," she said, "Lord knows I can't judge you."

"I'd appreciate it if you could...forget this," he said stiffly. "Knowing what I am..."

"I'll not treat you differently, and obviously I'll tell no one." She paused. "Is Severus lucid?"

"He was always lucid."

"I know. Go to him, and tell him I'll be with him shortly."


	4. Chapter 4

The room was dark, but not so dark she couldn't see how innocent he looked, like a child. Brow unlined, hair long and visibly soft, the faintest hint of stubble on his jaw. It had been forever since she had seen him, and the last time she had, he had been no older than this. Thirty. Thirty years old when he should have been forty, and back from the dead. It was unbelievable.

"Severus," she said quietly.

He opened his eyes. They were pools of ink against the whiteness of his face. "He was here."

"Yes." She sat at the foot of the bed. "There's no need to couch your words too carefully. This wedding is only happening because my –" Suddenly it sounded so strange. She decided to explain. "My father did a portrait of my mother, using blood and potions instead of paint. It's not very realistic, but it has a strange power over me. I've locked it in the dungeons, and out of sight out of mind, but there are times when I am drawn to it. And when the portrait commands me to do something...I have to do it. I have found no spell to undo that, and the thing is, for all intents and purposes, indestructible."

"Ah." Snape considered sitting up, then thought better of it. "Evidently some Dark magic to force you to do your father's will from beyond. And the portrait has ordered you to marry Griswold Grindelwald?"

"Yes, who happens to be the most self-absorbed, egotistical –" With effort, Anaia halted the barrage of insults and focused on the matter at hand. "He is in possession of one of the Deathly Hallows."

Snape inhaled sharply. "Which?"

"The Resurrection Stone."

He closed his eyes. "And he will resume the search for the others."

"Naturally. He informs me that his mother is Bellatrix Lestrange, and that he was created in a cauldron." Anaia delivered a brief synopsis of Grindelwald's entry into the world, and then promptly broke her promise to Rastalan. "Rastalan was similarly created. He is half house-elf, and half –"

"Your father," Snape said. "He has the hair, the eyes. That explains his appearance."

"He has been attempting to make himself further human via Dark magic and the wand my father somehow managed to give him. I always found that strange...my father never expressed the belief that non-humans should be allowed wands..."

"A moment of weakness," he suggested. "A minor way of repenting for his sins."

"He always wanted a son," she said, and then, "The Powers That Be sent you back to get _me_ to kill Griswold?"

"That was the implication." Snape recounted what Lupin had told him. "I am unaware of why I cannot simply do it myself."

"The ways of the universe do not unfold easily," Anaia murmured. "There must be a reason. I must know what it is, why it is so important that Griswold be killed by me."

"Perhaps only the Darkest magic can undo what his father has done. I think that his origins give him a certain power, a hold on life that cannot be severed by the Avada Kedavra." Snape shrugged, and wiped his pale forehead. "These are areas into which I never ventured. I never sought immortality, I never sought to breed house-elves with humans, conduct experiments of the kind your father did..."

"He documented his findings," she said. "It was a group of them – my father, Augustus Caesar, Mordecai Weiss, Iago Malenfant, Diego Nox. Rich, idle, dangerous men. It wasn't merely scientific curiosity, but pure wickedness. How long can a vampire live on rat's blood alone? Why does a unicorn die when you saw off its horn? There is a book, a horrible book...my father called it the Mayhem Manual."

The Mayhem Manual contained all the information surrounding every experiment Bartholomew Zephyrine and his bored Dark wizard friends had done. It was intensely difficult to read; the text writhed on the page, and if you looked away from it, when you looked back, its contents would have changed to something different and even more horrifying. One moment you would be struggling to understand the finer points of captive werewolf breeding, and the next you would be staring at a full-colour diagram of the squirming internal organs of a crucified house-elf.

"Have you ever read it?" Snape asked.

Anaia spared him a look, and he immediately knew the answer. "Once," she said softly. "I tried, once. I was seventeen, an adult in the wizarding world, and thought that perhaps I was ready. When I saw what my father had done..." She shook her head. "I should have destroyed it, but I didn't. It is hidden in the library. I would not recommend you attempt to find it."

"I am curious," he admitted, "but I will read it only if you allow me. Agreed?"

She nodded. "I fear we will need it for what is to come. The Mayhem Manual contains the very Darkest of magic...surely we will require the Darkest of magic to destroy the Darkest of wizards?"

Snape pondered the possibility. "It is likely. Your father would have written of his exploits concerning Rastalan. The book might contain information that might prove useful with Grindelwald."

"God." Anaia pressed one hand to her face. "That's right. In the meantime, Griswold is out searching for the Hallows. He found the Resurrection Stone in the forest at Hogwarts and he'd have to be an idiot not to know where the Elder Wand is."

Snape cocked his head.

"Harry Potter," she said by way of explanation. "Come, you taught him for six years. I have never even met the boy. Surely you can think of what he would have done with it?"

"Dumbledore's tomb." Snape shook his head. "Idiot boy." It was said without rancour.

"Fortunately, Griswold is stupidly intelligent. He's clever, but not wise. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes." Oddly enough, he did. "He won't think of it right off. Which leaves the cloak."

"Which I imagine is in Harry Potter's possession."

Snape abruptly reached up to his forehead and checked his temperature. "My fever's broken. What did you do?"

"I did nothing. I left you in Rastalan's hands." She shifted, running her fingertips over the sheets. "My brother. The chaos my father has wrought on this world...but never mind. He may yet help us to destroy Griswold."

"I thought you could not disobey the portrait," Snape objected.

"I can't," she said grimly, "but I will have to. I will search the Mayhem Manual for a way to do that. If there is a countercurse to the curse, it will be there."

"No." Snape pushed himself into a sitting position. His head spun a little initially, but he was almost fully recovered. "You delay Grindelwald from pushing his search for the Hallows. I will read the Manual for the countercurse and for information on..." He trailed off, noticing her stricken expression. "What have I said?"

"The only way to delay his search," Anaia said through white lips, "is to marry him."

He paused, the effect of that sinking in. "Oh. I rather hadn't thought of that."

"The Mayhem Manual is a terrible read," she said desperately. "You are in no shape to read it. I will do it. Many have tried to read it, children of my father's friends. They are all mad or dead. It's so easy to go insane reading it..."

"Are you expressing concern for my safety?" Snape enquired, a hint of a smile just playing at one corner of his mouth.

Anaia glared at him, making full use of her icy, penetrating eyes. She brushed her hair back from her face, and for the first time since his arrival at the manor he noticed her tattoo. It was on her neck, a small dragon, and it glittered with the same iridescence as its much larger counterpart. Even as he watched it, it crouched, tail flicking back and forth as though waiting to attack him.

"I'd just rather you didn't go mad and die," she said. "You saved my life once. I haven't forgotten that."

"You repaid your debt."

"I didn't say I hadn't. I said you saved my life. We spent years hating each other, then you saved me and I saved you and we went back to hating each other like it had never happened." Her hands knotted in the sheet. "When you died I felt like the world was over."

_Here we go_, Snape thought.

"Don't you look at me like that," she snapped. "We hated each other but at least there was something to feel. I felt something for someone that wasn't apathy, that wasn't indifference. And if there were long, sleepless nights where I disdained rest in favour of plotting revenge – how _dare_ you save my life that night in Albania, how _dare_ you indebt me – what did it matter, as long as it was _something_ that I felt?"

Anaia was breathing hard. He could only see himself in her silvery, mirroring eyes. "I don't expect you to understand," she added, in control once more. "And that doesn't matter. But I am still very much indebted to you for saving my life, and I will not let you read that damned book."

"And you cursed Karl Blackthorne's wand hand off in a high-speed broom chase through the pitch darkness of Bulgaria a second before he could hit me with a Killing Curse," Snape said patiently. "I, to an extent, owe you as well. You are more valuable than I am. You have influence over Griswold Grindelwald. You will distract him from his search for the Hallows with whatever temptations you can provide. And you will bring that book to me. We have not a moment to spare."

* * *

><p>The main difference between Tom Riddle and Griswold Grindelwald was in the intensity of their devotion to the black arts. Tom had spent the better part of his adult life focused on merging darkness and immortality with such single-minded concentration that he had no time or desire for anything else. Grindelwald, on the other hand, was still subject to other pleasures. His carnality was probably his greatest weakness, but it was one that Anaia could use to her advantage.<p>

She looked at herself in the mirror. Her mother had given her a lithe body and smooth skin, and with her father's drastic colouring, she would have had a horde of suitors had she not also been an outcast of epic proportions. She licked her lips. She was ready.

"Call him," she said softly.

Rastalan disappeared with a crack. Anaia turned to the bed. She had gone all out. Candles, black silk sheets, twin glasses of elf-made wine on the bedside table. She felt distinctly vulnerable in the dress, but wasn't that the point?

Another crack, and Rastalan was there. "He comes," he whispered, and disappeared again.

She gripped the bedpost, leaning her forehead against the cool wood. Goosebumps had risen on her exposed skin, her heart was pounding at the base of her throat. If it was the last thing she did in life, she was going to set that portrait on fire and listen to it scream.

There was a sharp knock on the door. She turned her face away, hiding in her hair. "Come in."

"What is the –" He stopped, and she heard an audible intake of breath. "Oh."

"I decided not to wait," she said, and turned to him. "I apologize if I took you from something important."

"Nothing is more important than you," he stated, with such desire in his voice that she did, for the moment, believe him. There was snow in his hair and along his shoulders. Clearly the manor was still situated somewhere cold.

"You must be cold," she said, and crossed the room to hand him a glass. "This will warm you." As he took a sip, she reached up to brush the snow from his hair.

Grindelwald set down the glass. "You will warm me."

Anaia stayed perfectly still as he ran his fingers through her hair, bent his head to kiss her neck. She knew his lips were cold, they always were, and his breath smelled like the wine and some kind of animal.

He laid her on the bed, and she let him do it. The only thing that made it bearable was that she mercifully could not feel his touches – she had wrapped her body in Dark magic that made her numb to Grindelwald.

She responded to his kisses, which was strange because she could not feel him, only resistance that felt like air. She arched her body at the appropriate times, murmured suitable words. But she felt nothing. It was not the first time she had been thankful for Dark magic. She knew it was dangerous but she embraced it, for it was useful and could do things ordinary magic could not. And that was the same kind of thinking that had driven her father to do the things he had done.

* * *

><p>"She is with him," Rastalan reported without being asked, and put a glass of firewhiskey on the table.<p>

Snape glanced up, tossed back the drink wordlessly, and looked back down at the book only to nearly drop it in shock. The page had changed from a list of unthinkable curses to a detailed illustration of a werewolf in the process of tearing a pregnant witch's belly open. He swore and turned the page as hurriedly as he could.

It was painful to watch Snape read the Mayhem Manual, far less for him to actually do the reading. The pages were cold to the touch; they twisted, slippery, in his hands. The print blurred. The illustrations whispered to him. Every time he turned a page he could smell blood more and more strongly, and he dared not tear his eyes from the book again.

Rastalan sat quietly at the foot of the bed, his gaze on Snape as Snape's was on the book. "Anything?" A quick, distracted shake of the head. He could only imagine the headache the wizard must have.

"Merlin." Anaia was standing in the doorway, dressed in her usual robes and devoid of Dark enchantments. "Severus, it's going to kill you."

"Shh!" he said furiously, turning the pages relentlessly.

She turned away, and Rastalan placed a glass of firewhiskey in her hand. She downed it, smiled absently at him, and walked to the window, staring out through the glass into the night. There was a hell of a snowstorm outside, but in the dark she could see Nyx's fiery glow. Her familiar was coming home.

Sighing, Anaia poured herself another firewhiskey and shot that too before turning back to Snape, who had suddenly and miraculously stumbled upon the right page.

He read the passage out loud, once, slammed the book shut and hurled it at Anaia with enough force to double her over when she caught it. "Get it away." He was trembling, and she only now noticed that the sheets were soaked. "Get it out of my sight!"

She handed the book to Rastalan, who vanished with it, and moved to the foot of Snape's bed. "Blood."

"Yes, blood." He lay back against the pillows, then made an irritated noise when he realized the sheets were wet. Anaia dried them with a flick of her wand, and Snape arranged himself more comfortably. "According to that infernal book, you have to combine your blood and just a touch of dragon's blood, soak the portrait in it, and set it on fire."

Anaia paled. "That's insane."

"Why is that insane? It seems like a perfectly usual Dark –"

"Severus," she interrupted, "I think it may be time you saw the portrait of which I speak."


	5. Chapter 5

The dungeons were cold, damp, and populated by rats, which Anaia idly blasted out of existence as she walked through with Snape. "Vanishing," she said when she saw the look on his face. "I'm not that cruel."

They walked on a little more, Snape clad in a long fur-lined cloak over his robes. Anaia was not similarly covered, but she did not appear to feel the cold. She came to a stop before a black wall that stretched fifteen or twenty feet, and was about ten feet wide. "Here," she said, and tugged at the darkness, which pooled at her feet to reveal that the entire wall was what appeared to be a horribly painted portrait.

"It's on a canvas." Anaia had averted her eyes. "I stretched the canvas over the wall, since it refused to let me roll it. I keep it covered all the time."

Snape winced. "I see why." Bartholomew might have been many things, but he was no artist. He could barely make out the shape of a woman, with what looked like dark hair. The oddly spaced dabs of a moss-like substance could've indicated green eyes, but aside from that he was lost. The damn thing twisted like the Mayhem Manual. "And I see that we have a problem."

Anaia flicked her wand and the black cloth leapt back up, obscuring the blasphemy that Bartholomew had created. "Twenty by ten. Two hundred square feet. How much blood do you think I would have to give in order to soak that canvas?"

"I have a feeling half the blood would evaporate anyway as soon as it touched the thing," Snape replied grimly. "Your father couldn't have thought of everything. Have you tried Fiendfyre?"

"It wouldn't let me do anything except hide it." She was chewing on the edge of one thumbnail. "My magic must be powerless against it."

He shook back his sleeves, and raised his wand. The cloth dropped from the painting. "Have the countercurse ready, if you please. _Dei incendio_!"

A fiery dragon burst from the end of Snape's wand, followed by a chimaera, a serpent...his eyes lost track of the shapes. The flames licked at the canvas, beasts biting and clawing, but the damage was minimal. Slight charring around the edges, some flaking colours. That was all.

"_Aqua vitae_," Snape murmured, and a thick, silvery liquid swamped the Fiendfyre, drowning the fiery creatures, and disappeared. He turned, and Anaia was on the ground, face scrunched in pain and fingers tightly plugging her ears. "Christ."

"No – I'll be fine –" she gasped, and sat up, kicking a rat aside when it ran up to investigate. "For the love of everything in this world, never do that again!"

Snape caught hold of her arm and pulled her to her feet. "What happened?"

"It screamed." She pushed her hair back from her face. Her eyes were haunted. "Inhuman – but I think it was the voice of my mother, or maybe I'm supposed to think that – screaming in agony." She looked up at the portrait. "Well."

"I'd say I improved it," Snape commented wryly, magically tossing the cloth back up over it, and nodded to the corridor. "Come. I need the Manual again."

Anaia stared at him, aghast. "What? You're going to read that again?"

"I have no choice." He maintained his grip on her arm, steering her unerringly through the winding corridors. "I found something that is of no use. I need to find a different countercurse, or a way to alter this one so that it can be performed without killing you. I also need to find whatever Bartholomew may have written about how he created Rastalan."

She stopped, turned to him in the darkness. "Severus, you're going to kill yourself."

Snape's eyebrows reacted to her desperate tone, but of course she couldn't see it. "And you care only because you owe me?"

"That and – you were sent here to –" She was having trouble. "Merlin! I don't have to explain myself to you!"

He was unfazed. "You are perfectly right. But I think I am also right in saying that your concern for my health and welfare seems to go beyond either your debt or your concern to obey the Powers That Be."

There was dead silence. Not even the sound of rats scurrying. Snape could hear Anaia's breathing, could almost hear his heartbeat. And then, so quick he almost missed it, so soft it could have been a dream, she kissed him, the lightest touch of lips to lips. There was the sound of running feet, and she was gone.

* * *

><p>Snape buried himself in the Mayhem Manual. He poured himself into the pages, unyielding in his need to know. It was more than a mission from the Powers That Be, he knew. He felt as though this was redemption. Sure, he had been in heaven – or what passes for heaven – while he had been dead, but he needed more than that. And, it seemed, the Powers That Be had understood that, and were willing to provide.<p>

"Stop it," he hissed to himself. "You cannot! Lily!"

But Lily was dead. And not only dead, she was still in love with James Potter. She had come to him smiling, had wrapped him in a warm hug and kissed his cheek, had thanked him for her son, but then she had gone. It was only a courtesy, he understood. She owed him nothing. He had done terrible things in the past. How he had died was only right.

"How could I – my whole life – to forget –"

A fool's argument. He had lived his whole life in love with her. He had gone to excruciating lengths to protect her son because Harry Potter's green eyes were all that was left of Lily Evans. He had done all that had been asked of him. It would not be ignoble to put that love behind him now, perhaps to fall anew...

Anaia Zephyrine was beautiful. She practiced Dark magic without a care, she was moody and mercurial, and she had a long family history of madness and cruelty stretching back past the Middle Ages. Most of her life she had been neutral, but this was no longer true. She had saved Snape's life. She was going to kill Grindelwald because she recognized that he was a threat. And it seemed that she cared about a living creature that was not her dragon familiar nor her loosely categorized house-elf.

Snape blinked suddenly. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the open pages of the Mayhem Manual, and he realized what he was looking at. A small creature, splashing in a cauldron. He had struck proverbial gold.

He left the book open, staring at it with unfocused eyes. This, perhaps, was an easier plan, an easier way to get the information than by actually forcing himself to read the text. When he judged that sufficient time had passed, he shut it and threw it across the room. When his headache had eased enough for him to open his eyes, he lifted his wand to his head and drew a silvery tendril of memory from it, guiding it to a jar he had pulled from the air.

"Rastalan," he said out loud.

The house-elf popped into the room. "You read the book again," he said, evidently noticing the Manual where it lay ungraciously on the floor.

"Had no choice. And this is not the last time I will have to read it." Snape paused. "Food, if you will. Anything will do. And if you could call Miss Zephyrine, please."

"Miss Zephyrine," Rastalan said, one eyebrow raised. "Not Anaia. Interesting. As you wish. Your meal will be served in the dining room." And he was gone.

* * *

><p>Snape was halfway through his meal when he became aware of Anaia's presence. She was sitting at the other end of the table, and her black hair and robes blended so well together and into the surrounding darkness that she seemed nothing more than a face in midair. Before her sat a plate of the same thing he was eating – linguine, with sun-dried tomatoes, basil, garlic, chicken, and mozzarella cheese over the whole thing. She was thoroughly ignoring him.<p>

He returned the favour, devoting his full attention to the pasta. This was the first food he had had since his ignominious arrival in the land of the living, and he thought it was the best thing he had ever tasted. He closed his eyes, relishing in the flavours, and also knowing that she was watching him. He was rewarded with an impatient harrumphing noise.

"It's not _that_ good." Her voice floated down to him from the other end of the table.

He took his time chewing, and swallowed before he answered her. "_You_ haven't been dead."

"Is there no food?" she asked with interest.

"There's whatever you want. The weather is whatever you prefer, you have wine or pumpkin juice or any of a thousand material things at your disposal. And they all taste perfect, naturally. But you – I knew they weren't real."

Anaia laughed. "Trust you to be dissatisfied with heaven."

"Not dissatisfied," he objected. "Critical. Everything was too wonderful. I had peace, and I had comfort, but I needed something else. A little chaos, perhaps. A touch of disorder. Some pain to make it real."

"Bleeding just to know you're alive?" she queried with a smirk he couldn't account for.

Snape considered. "Yes. Something like that."

"Rastalan told me you read the book again."

"I did." From within his robes Snape drew the jar containing the wisp of memory. "This will tell us the contents of the page. I was, I confess, in no mood to actually read it."

Anaia started to say something, stopped, started again and finally stopped starting at all. "You _could_ tear out the pages," she suggested. "That's the only way they keep the same thing."

He stared at her. "You couldn't have said this yesterday?"

"I didn't remember. I was around when they were creating the thing, and it seems to me to be the only way it makes sense. Detach the pages from the book, and they stop changing. Otherwise it just gets worse and worse until you go mad reading it." She sighed. "It's an awful thing, I know. You're absolutely horrified by everything you see and yet...somehow you always want to see more. The book creates a sick curiosity."

"No wonder Bartholomew cracked," Snape said, spearing a sliver of chicken with his fork.

"Oh, he was mad long before that." Anaia was lost in memory. "_She_ was the insane one, though. My mother. There were a few years when the manor didn't move at all, for some reason, and we lived near a pond. I was very young, but every day my mother would go out there and feed the ducks. She would sing to them, talk to them as though they were my father and myself, sometimes she'd cast Killing Curses if she was in the mood. But always something to do with the ducks."

"That doesn't sound too insane," Snape said cautiously. He had heard of far worse things; Anaia's attacks on the rats earlier had worried him a bit before he'd realized it was only Vanishing.

"It's perfectly insane." She looked at him. "Severus, there were no ducks."

He nodded. "Ah."

"I never knew what would greet me in the morning – a jinx, perhaps. I often awoke to find myself upside down in the air, hanging from one ankle, suspended from nothing at all. That was my father, mostly. My mother was quieter. More than once during the course of your average year I would find a snake in my bed upon opening my eyes." She stopped. "I'm making them sound quite terrible, aren't I?"

"Weren't they quite terrible?" Snape enquired. "My parents fought bitterly nearly all the time, but I admit I was never awoken by levitation, nor did I ever find a snake in my bed that one of them had put there. My father often expressed a desire to tie a brick around my neck and drown me in the nearest pond, but that obviously never came to fruition."

"They were dangerous," she said, "and they were mad, but...they loved me, in their own strange way. I know you'll not believe that, but there were times when my mother was the loveliest, gentlest woman alive. Sometimes she would hold me at night when I struggled to sleep, and tell me stories. They were dark twisty stories that made no sense, but she would tell them so sweetly, and she would stroke my hair, tell me how proud she was of me. Half the time she'd even get my name right."

Snape covered his eyes.

"All right," Anaia said crossly. "Enough of my traumatic childhood. Tell me about yours."

He sighed. "My mother was a witch. She married a Muggle. Things were far from perfect. I was born, my father realized that I was like her, things became less perfect. I became a Death Eater, my parents died, et voila." He had told the story, such as it was, in a monotone.

"Did you really spend the afternoons lying on your bed shooting down flies from the ceiling?"

Having not even felt her probing, he gave a start, and threw up the wall immediately. "Get out of my head!"

She looked most abashed. "I didn't mean to. If I get too interested in someone, I tend to –" She stopped. "Continue. Were you abused?" she asked with morbid interest.

Snape eyed her. "No, _you_ continue. Last I hear, you were expressing interest in me."

Anaia's face turned a brilliant shade of red. "Shut up, you're delusional."

He stood, almost knocking over the chair, and stalked around the table until he reached her. Grabbing her arm, he yanked her to her feet. "Don't think I don't recall what happened in the dungeons," he growled. "If there's one thing I hate, Zephyrine, it's running from consequences! Face what you've done!"

The red had faded to a mild pink. "You make it sound like I killed you down there," she murmured, and glanced down at his hand where it gripped her arm. "I'm going to have bruises in the morning, Severus."

"Isn't that what you want?" he snapped.

Silence fell between them. He looked at her, the blood rushing headlong through his veins, and abruptly let her go. "I'm sorry."

"I kissed you," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"Was it a command by the portrait, perhaps?" he jeered.

"No." Anaia folded her arms tightly across her chest, avoiding his gaze for all she was worth. "Look, I'm sorry. Is there another language in which you would like me to apologize, or can we move on?"

"Not yet." Snape took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, and tilted her head back so that she met his eyes. "Why are you so afraid? Did you think I was going to curse your mouth off?"

"I thought you might've been considering it." She turned her face out of his grasp. "There are larger things at stake here than whatever feelings –"

"Incriminating word."

"– that I _might_ possibly have an inkling of an iota of a hint of for you. I wouldn't be too flattered if I were you; considering that you are the first human bar Griswold that I have seen in about three years, that's not exactly a compliment."

"If it were that simple," Snape pointed out, "you'd have feelings for him too."

"Well, the first human who isn't a self-absorbed, egotistical twat," she modified, and took a step back. "Shall we examine your memory?"

He capitulated. "Fine. I shall require your Pensieve."

"Rastalan," she said, and the house-elf appeared, cross-legged, on top of the table. "Bring my Pensieve, if you will."

"I will. But first I think it may be relevant to tell you that Nyx is back, and she is gravely injured."

Anaia's face drained of colour. "Take me to her," she said, and they ran from the room. Snape followed through winding corridors until they arrived in the hall, where the dragon lay across marble and obsidian tiles. A vast gash had been torn down her side, and blood was everywhere. She was clearly in great pain, clouds of steam billowing from her nostrils, but she remained motionless as Anaia began to wave her wand and mutter.

"Dark magic," she said finally. "Rastalan, bring it."

"Mistress –"

"This is important!"

The house-elf vanished, and not a second later returned with a small jar containing a clear liquid. It could have been water, but not with that pearly glow, and Snape knew it was one of the most powerful healing substances in the known world. Phoenix tears.

"How did you get that?" he asked, even as he suctioned the dragon's blood from the walls and floor, rerouting the mess into a large bottle.

"I am not so evil that a phoenix will not cry for me," Anaia said, which told him nothing, and she uncapped the jar. With slow and careful dabs of her wand, she began to apply the tears to the wound, and Snape watched as scales patched themselves together, leaving not a hint of a scar. There was barely any of the liquid left in the jar by the time Nyx was healed.

Snape cleaned up the rest of the blood, sealed the bottle, and handed it to Rastalan, who disappeared with it. Dragon's blood had twelve uses, as discovered by Albus Dumbledore, and no doubt they would find themselves needing it somewhere along the way.

Anaia was kneeling beside the dragon, stroking her long neck. "Who did this to you?" she whispered, and Nyx lifted her head to touch her nose to Anaia's forehead.

Snape wasn't sure exactly what happened, but it was common knowledge that magical familiars could communicate with their masters directly, and he supposed that this was an example. Dragon and witch remained like that for a moment, locked in a strange and sweet embrace of sorts, and then Anaia drew back. She was shaking with anger.

"Nicholas Blackthorne," she said. "Karl Blackthorne's worthless son."

"He must have recognized Nyx," Snape guessed. "Antipodean Opaleyes aren't very common outside of New Zealand and Australia. Evidently the family holds a grudge, and I'm not surprised – a wand hand is a terrible thing to lose. Without a wand, a wizard is limited to instinctive magic, and is only slightly more magical than a teaspoon. He may have followed her here."

"He's never been here before, he won't be able to see it. He cannot get in without my permission, and I will not grant him that." Anaia sighed, and bent over the dragon. "I will see that he pays," she whispers. "Not with his wand hand like his filthy father before him, but his life."

Snape was surprised by her vehemence, although he wasn't sure precisely why it surprised him. It wasn't like she hadn't done similar things before. "Anaia..."

"He wounded my familiar," she said, turning to him. Her eyes blazed with anger. "My familiar is my family. She is my blood. You shed my blood, you die. I would do the same for Rastalan, and for you."

"I'd hardly consider myself your blood."

"You have read the Mayhem Manual twice, and probably plan to read it again. You endeavour to free me of my obligations to that cursed portrait in the dungeons, and to get me out of my impending marriage to Griswold. Whatever the reasons for that, I am grateful nonetheless." She jerked her head self-consciously. "You have the thanks and the loyalty of all three of us."

Rastalan cracked into the room, and set a stone basin on a table that had appeared out of nowhere. "The Pensieve. I apologize for my lateness." And he was gone.

Snape uncapped the jar, and lifted the silvery thought out of it and into the Pensieve. He prodded its contents until he found what he was looking for, and then he nodded to Anaia. Together, they leaned over until their noses touched the swirling contents.

Snape was sucked in head over heels, and landed dizzily on his feet next to himself. Memory-Snape looked half mad, rifling through the pages of the book, swearing out loud, and muttering things. "Stop it! You cannot! Lily!"

Snape's dark eyes widened. This was not where he had intended to start the memory. Beside him, Anaia raised an eyebrow. "I told you that book would drive you mad."

"That's not madness," he ground out, watching his absurdly young memory twin – he was thirty now, he must remember that – come close to tearing out his own hair. "That's torture."

"How could I – my whole life – to forget –"

Snape felt the tendrils of Anaia's mind too late. By the time the impenetrable wall had sprung into existence, he knew that she knew. "Not now!" he snapped when she looked like she was going to speak, and bent over his own shoulder. "Here!"

She leaned over memory-Snape's other shoulder, whispering the text to herself. It was still devilishly difficult to read, but not so bad as when actually holding the book. "Who did these illustrations? Couldn't have been my father, he'd never have been able to make them look this good..."

"Would you focus on the important things?" Snape hissed, fingertip almost touching the book as he memorized what was written. "There. Done. And it's about time, I think..."

Memory-Snape wrenched his head up from the book, slammed it shut so that a cloud of dust erupted from the pages, and flung it across the room. The room swirled around them, and then Snape was spinning backwards through the darkness.

The Pensieve spat them out with particular relish, Anaia actually stumbling back into the wall. "I'll have no temper from you!" she said to the basin, holding up her wand threateningly. The maelstrom of thoughts in it subsided, and in a moment it sat as innocuous as the piece of stone it was.

"Ras –" The house-elf appeared, grabbed the Pensieve, and disappeared before Anaia could even finish his name. She paused. "Thank you," she called belatedly into the air. Turning to Snape, one eyebrow rose up her forehead until it almost merged with her hairline. "Do you perhaps wish to explain the contents of your head, or shall I go ahead and draw my own conclusions?"

His mouth tightened into a line. "You will do nothing but close your mouth and open your ears," he said crisply, "for to my knowledge, we have just discovered a possible way to kill Grindelwald."


	6. Chapter 6

"That's the plan?" Anaia shook her head. "Madness. Do you expect him to sit happily in a cauldron while we perform the ritual?"

"That is where you come in. If the water is heated slowly enough, a frog in a cauldron will not realize it is being cooked until it is too late." Snape folded his arms. "You will soothe him, distract him, have sex with him – whatever will work to keep him unguarded. The ritual will not affect you, but it will, if the Manual is right, kill him. 'Cause it to fall apart into its separate components', rather."

"And this is to be done in the bathtub." She had one hand on her hip. "Again – madness."

"Perfect madness," he said. "I will explain it to you once more in exquisite detail – you will need to actually pay attention to me, I trust that will not be an issue – and then we will set about gathering the required ingredients. We have only three days before the new moon."

* * *

><p>Rastalan read the list. "There is not enough time."<p>

"If we don't do it now, we won't be able to do it for a month. There has to be enough time." Anaia ran her hands through her hair. "The ritual was silent on the forms these substances need be in, but they must all come into contact with him on the night of the new moon between eleven o'clock and midnight. You must not touch them during that time – preferably you should not come into direct contact with them at all, for they will have the same effect on you."

"Phoenix blood, unicorn blood, basilisk blood – where am I to find these things? I cannot walk down Diagon Alley, mistress!"

"I don't care how you find them!" she cried. "You will beg, borrow, steal, you may even kill if you prefer, but you _must_ find what you can from this list or I will be forced to play the part of the adoring wife to Griswold Grindelwald!"

"Is this the full list?"

"No. Severus and I have a list of things to find as well."

"Very well," Rastalan said with difficulty. "I shall do my best."

When he had gone, she drew her own list from within her robes. Rastalan had a hard list, but there were items on hers that were also going to prove a great challenge to find. The herbs were easy enough. Eye of toad she probably already had stowed away. But thestral blood, banshee eyelashes, manticore venom, kelpie mane, petrified lethifold...most of those were almost impossible to find. Either way, she didn't envy Rastalan one iota. He had to find a nundu claw.

"He's gone?" Snape asked, making his appearance with an armful of pouches.

Anaia nodded. "You've been through my stores."

"Not to mention mucking about in a few fields. Belladonna, mallowsweet, sage, eye of toad, and kelpie mane accounted for." Snape laid them on the table. "I'd ask why you have that last one, but I don't think I want to know the answer. Did your father keep Dark artifacts about? He's likely to have manticore venom in there."

"There may be some in the dungeons where he used to have his laboratory," she said. "I only know one place I'm guaranteed to find thestrals, and I can probably find a banshee in the forest too."

"The Forbidden Forest, at Hogwarts." Snape sighed. "Fine. We Apparate outside the grounds and fly in via broom."

"I have two Firebolt Mark Twos in the hall."

* * *

><p>The flight was a short one, and they flew bent close to the brooms, moving under shadow of darkness over the wall and right down into the thick of the trees. That was where they diverged; Anaia veered in one direction to seek out the skeletal thestrals, and Snape moved deeper into the Forbidden Forest on his hunt for a banshee.<p>

It wasn't long before the outskirts of the forest gave way to a clearing, and Anaia saw several of the animals grazing. They were lovely creatures, although many magical folk seemed to be under the impression that to see a thestral was bad luck. That was utter nonsense; to see a thestral simply meant that you had seen death.

Anaia chose one slightly to the left of the herd, bigger than the others. Its blank, white eyes looked at her, and it allowed her to stroke its nose. She leaned her forehead against its dragonish neck. "I need some blood," she said softly. "Not a lot, just a little. Will you let me take it?"

The horse glanced at her, expressionless. She drew the small knife, laid it in her palm. The thestral bared its fangs momentarily, gave her a deep sniff and a long, searching look, and then went back to its task. That was as close to approval as she was going to get.

Anaia made a small cut in the thestral's shoulder. It didn't even flinch. She held a small vial against the wound, collecting several drops of the blood, and then murmured a spell to heal it. She took the liberty of patting it once more, then mounted her broom.

Meanwhile, in the depths of the forest, Snape was moving at a slow glide, weaving in and out of the trees. Ahead the trees seemed to be thinning out, and he decreased speed even further until he was barely moving at all. He slipped off the broom, and moved diagonally for a bit until he could see a small, rocky pond. There was a figure hunched at the pond's edge, with long straggles of black hair. A hand reached out to touch the water, and he saw the green tinge to the skin.

"_Stupefy_," he murmured, and the banshee toppled into the pond.

Hurrying forward into the clearing, he used a flick of his wand to move her, magically dragging her backward so she flopped on the grass like a rag doll. He pushed her hair out of her eyes, and, none too carefully, yanked several of her admittedly sparse eyelashes out. Banshees, he reflected, as he stored the eyelashes carefully in a tiny plastic bag, were nowhere near pretty and not worth romanticizing by Muggles.

Job done, Snape got back onto the broom and zipped out to the edge of the trees, where Anaia was just stowing her collected thestral blood in her robes. "That was quick," she said. "Did you get it?"

He nodded as they rose above the wall. "I think I can arrange for the petrified lethifold."

"You're supposed to be dead," she reminded him.

"I know that," he said with great annoyance. "I can disguise myself, as can you. It'll involve Knockturn Alley and some unsavoury characters."

"Do you think I'm not accustomed to those?" Anaia began prodding various parts of her anatomy with her wand, and in no time at all she had stringy black hair, a crooked nose, an upturned chin, and dull grey eyes, not to mention was as skinny as a rail. She magicked her robes into something patched and dirty, and folded her arms at him. "Come on." Even her voice had changed; it was creaky and hoarse. "Your turn."

Snape sighed, and resigned himself to becoming short, stumpy, and balding, dressed in mismatched clothes and with narrow gimlet eyes. "Quite the pair. Stow the brooms, we can't take these into Knockturn Alley."

Anaia managed to hide them in a tree, then drew a magical X on it that only she could see, and together they Apparated onto the slimy cobblestones of Knockturn Alley.

* * *

><p>Snape and Anaia drew little attention; they looked like everyone else there. He wound his way through the groups of scruffily dressed wizards and witches, towards a beanpole man wearing a thoroughly ridiculous striped hat. "Eh," Snape said, leaning in, and he had evidently acquired an accent from nowhere, "d'you know as where I c'n get me 'ands on a sliver o' petrified lethifold?"<p>

The man eyed him lazily, and said began to pick his teeth. When he had completed most of the top row, he said, "Cost you."

"'Ow much?"

The man made the rounds of the bottom teeth as well. "'Undred Galleons."

Snape sucked in his breath as though it hurt him. He squirmed a little, and Anaia grasped his elbow. "We'll find a way," she said. "Take it now, afore there's none left."

"All righ'," Snape muttered to the man. "I'll take it." He turned to Anaia as they followed the man into a dark pub. "Turn out your pockets now, let's see 'ow much we got..."

By the time they had unburdened themselves, there was a pile of Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts sitting on the table, and they had only a Knut remaining between them. Snape breathed a sigh of relief, pushing the pile across the table. "Just 'bout enough, eh?"

The man gathered the money in a pouch that was clearly enchanted – all the money managed to fit inside it, and the pouch was tiny – and dropped a small black thing on the table. It could have been petrified wood, or plastic, or in fact any black thing. "What's your purpose for't?" he asked, chewing concentratedly on nothing at all.

"Bit o' this, bit o' that," Snape replied vaguely, and picked up the object in his fingers. It didn't change shape or size or do anything else, but it grew warm instantly, and the texture became almost silky. "Ah, 'ere we go."

"Be off," the man said, rising. "No longer a good time for Dark magic."

Snape glanced at Anaia, as if to say 'tell me about it', and then, silently, they popped onto a stretch of grass right outside the Hogwarts gates. "First things first," she said, and undid all the charms placed on her with one wand flick. Her natural form was so beautiful compared to the disguise that Snape visibly flinched. Fortunately, she didn't notice. "Where did that tree go...ah yes." She retrieved their brooms, tossing one to him.

Snape, who by now was back to his original form as well, kicked off the ground and didn't speak until he was about a hundred feet in the air. "That just leaves manticore venom for us to find; Rastalan is assumingly capable of handling the rest."

"I've no idea how he's going to work the nundu claw," Anaia said. "I can't fathom how he'd even get near one."

"He can find a dead one, get the claw from there." Snape tilted his head back into the wind, just breathing for a moment. It felt good to be alive, and how long had it been since he'd felt that way? "Do you think your father's got manticore venom in his stores, or shall we go find one to milk?"

She shot him a glance. "Have _you_ ever milked a manticore?"

"No. Have –"

"You don't want to. Trust me. I had some interesting household chores as a child. Off and on I had to milk the manticore. And I didn't have a wand to help me."

"Obviously you were never stung," Snape commented, "because the venom is fatal and you aren't dead."

"Or," she corrected, "I _was_ stung and that was actually the method of milking."

Dead silence. He decided to get out of this by being morbid. "Bartholomew found a way to extract venom from humans without having it kill them first?"

"Brilliant, aren't you?" She shifted on the broom, tying her long hair into a ponytail. "Useful, I imagine, but not even remotely painless. But it was easier for him than actually finding a way to get close to it and milk it without being stung. And Lord knows he wasn't going to get stung himself."

Snape absorbed that. "Thrilling childhood. Now, will it be in the dungeons, or must we find a manticore?"

Anaia was silent, considering. "I don't want to say for sure one way or the other." She sighed. "Rastalan!"

The elf popped into existence, seated on the broom in front of her and gripping tightly to the handle. He was panting. "Yes, mistress."

"Sorry. Is there manticore blood in my father's stores in the dungeons?"

"Yes." Rastalan's eyes were squeezed shut against the hundred or so feet between his precarious perch and the ground. "Is that all?"

"Yes, you can go." She turned to Snape. "Well, our work here is done."

"Lovely," he said, and reached for her hand.

Anaia linked her fingers with his and pulled them both into a wild mountainside. She squinted. "Tibet," she said, shook her head, and stalked up the steps.

Snape leaned his broom against the wall in the entryway and headed into the dining room, where he set the small bag on the table next to the pouches of herbs. Anaia set the vial of thestral blood next to it. There was a vial already there containing blood that glowed lightly. "That must be the phoenix blood. Rastalan's making good progress."

"We can visit the dungeons tomorrow," Anaia said blearily. "I don't know about you, but I'm completely knackered."

"Of course. I shall meet you here in the morning."

"Goodnight, Severus."

"Goodnight, Anaia."

* * *

><p>In his room in the west wing, Snape lay awake on top of the covers. He had found black cotton pajamas in the wardrobe, and was currently wearing those. With a start, he realized he hadn't had a bath since long before he'd been killed. For some reason, hygiene seemed important. It was necessary that he be clean, even if it were only so Grindelwald didn't smell his presence in the house.<p>

Snape, fresh robes in hand, roamed the west wing in search of a bath and got lost before he could find out. Retracing his steps, he managed to find his way into the east wing, assuming that was where Anaia slept. He was right, but she wasn't sleeping.

Snape leaned in the doorway, watching as she swum laps, fully clothed, in a bath the size of an outdoor pool. Apparently exhausted, she did a lazy stroke to the side, and he held out his hand to help her; Anaia yelped in surprise and tumbled back into the water with a resounding splash that thoroughly soaked him.

"What the devil are you doing here?"

"I wished for a bath and couldn't find one." He wiped water and suds from his eyes. "I see that this one is occupied."

"No, I'm finished." She hauled herself out, dried her robes with a tap of her wand, and wrapped a huge fluffy towel around her head. "Feel free. There is a bath somewhere in the west wing, but it's not as large as this, I'm afraid." She paused. "It's the tub I'm going to kill Griswold in, actually."

Snape marveled at how calmly she said it. "You're going to have to be ingenious in how you put the things together. Certain of the ingredients cannot be mixed with others beforehand or there will be unpredictable reactions. I will assist you in combining what can be combined, but for the rest of it...well, we will need to be very creative indeed."

She nodded. "I have a few ideas." Stepping away from the pool, she gestured to it. "Enjoy yourself. And try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a hard day."

* * *

><p>In the dungeons after a light breakfast – neither of them had been hungry after seeing the new vial of basilisk blood on the table – Anaia and Snape prowled the length of one corridor. "It's here," she murmured, "I know it is. I can't remember the exact spot."<p>

Snape raised his wand to cast a revealing enchantment.

"No, no." She waved him off. "Won't work. I'm a Zephyrine."

Well, that cleared up everything. Snape folded his arms and waited as she ran her hands over every inch of the wall twice. "Anaia, this is a waste –"

"_Oh_." Almost absently, she drew a silver knife from within her robes, cut her forearm, and then wiped it on the wall. Instantly the stone melted backwards and formed into a wooden door. "Pitiful, Father. So primitive..." She glanced at Snape. "Come on."

Beyond the door was a dark, damp room. It smelled like a place where, over the years, many animals had died. Anaia gave a majestic flick of her wand, a vast circle of torches lit up, and suddenly Snape knew where he was.

Shelves lined the room ceiling to floor, full of precisely labeled jars containing a variety of things Snape had never in his life wished to see. A preserved house-elf head sat atop a table, and there was a large barrel of assorted bones pushed in a corner of the room. Cauldrons of different sizes, a drinking goblet that was actually a skull, and at least a hundred highly dangerous objects lay strewn about the floor. In the middle of the room was a large cage that even now still glittered with enchantments, and the floor of the cage was brown with dried blood.

"This," Anaia said, "is where they wrote the Mayhem Manual."

Snape nodded, but couldn't speak.

"All right," she said, taking charge. "Manticore venom. Let's go."

He took the shelves on the left, while Anaia went right. Necklaces he was careful not to touch, a hand of glory, several petrified bats. Werewolf liver (was that good for anything?), a jar full of bezoars, and an open bottle of something black that tried to drown him when he got too close. Several stoppered bottles of vampire blood followed that, and then a mirror he downright refused to look at. A lock of veela hair lay draped over a large rocklike object he knew to be a dragon's heart.

"Find anything?" he called to her.

"Rat skeletons, werewolf saliva, and a mooncalf's hoof." There was a pause. "Nothing helpful."

Snape sighed as he pored over the contents of each shelf. There were some truly nasty things among them. A magical eye much like Moody's was nailed to a plank of wood that hissed when he attempted to touch it. An enchanted snake stared at him unblinkingly from its eternal home in a starry sphere that was set to levitate permanently three inches above the shelf. Next to it, a gasping rat had been cursed to run forever on its wheel. Snape had been a Death Eater, and he had seen and done evil things, but this room ranked high on the scale.

"Found it," Anaia said, and appeared next to him with a small vial of clear liquid. The stopper was a peculiar golden-green. "My father had a colour coding system of sorts. I remember this colour very well indeed." Her eyes fell on the rat. "Oh, for Merlin's sake." She drew her wand and slowly, pushed it through the invisible shield surrounding the rat until it touched the animal's patchy fur. "_Avada Kedavra_."

The rat fell off its wheel, the curse broken, and she turned to Snape. "He was a horrible man," she said softly. "He did horrible things. I don't apologize for anything you see here."

"You aren't like him."

She smiled sadly. "Severus, I'm more like him than you know." She held up the vial. "We should go."

* * *

><p>"All right," Snape said. They were in the dining room, the ingredients for the ritual spread out before them. Everything was there except nundu claw, which a bloody and half-blind Rastalan had gone back out to get. "All of these must touch Grindelwald's skin between eleven o'clock and midnight on the night of the new moon."<p>

"Tomorrow."

"Yes. Some must be consumed – the eyelashes, unicorn blood, belladonna, and eye of toad. The lethifold must pierce his skin. Everything else must merely touch him. Do you understand?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Now. Some of these substances are reactive and cannot come into direct contact with each other before the ritual. Unicorn blood can be mixed with nothing else. Belladonna can be mixed with nothing else. Chimaera and thestral blood can be mixed. Basilisk blood and manticore venom can be mixed but will be extremely corrosive unless you add the phoenix blood as well. Lethifold cannot be mixed. Kelpie mane cannot be mixed."

Anaia pressed her fingertips to her temples. "Fine. I follow you." She looked up. "If Rastalan does not manage to get the claw..."

"He will," Snape said. "If he found basilisk blood, he can probably get nundu claw as well. He's resourceful, and he's got a wand and an extensive repertoire of Dark magic. He'll be fine."

"Did you see him?"

"The damage can be undone." He shrugged. "What do you want me to say? This is the way it has to happen."

"I didn't figure you for the type to just sit by and let things happen," she bit back, and then closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm tense."

"With reason. The new moon is tomorrow. I recommend that you make some arrangements with your fiancé."

Anaia glowered at him, then magicked a quill and parchment from air and began to write. Barely a paragraph in, she dropped the quill, rolled the parchment, and stalked out of the room. A minute or two later she was back. "Happy?"

"Very," he said. "Now, how are you going to administer Griswold Grindelwald's death?"


	7. Chapter 7

"I cannot do this." Anaia was pacing furiously. She ran her hands back through her hair, spun on her heel, and made another lap of the room.

Snape braced his hands on the table and bent his head. "You have no choice."

"The portrait –"

"The portrait never told you not to kill Grindelwald. It told you to marry him. And you're going to marry him. In fact, you're going to tell him tonight that you've set the date for tomorrow. That should pacify him enough to bend to your will a little with whatever you've got planned."

"Merlin!" she screamed, and fisted her hands in her long hair. She looked quite mad.

"Anaia." Snape gripped her shoulders, turning her to face him. "Listen to me. I was dead, all right? It was important enough that Grindelwald die for the Powers That Be to bring me back to life. To give me a second chance. I, who spent time in the service of the Dark Lord, who gave the prophecy to him – I have been given a second chance. You know how important this must be." He looked into her eyes. They were shifting, changing between blue and silver, blinding him. "There is no other way."

She stared at him, searching his eyes – for what he didn't know – and then she nodded. "Fine," she said at last. "Fine. But promise me one thing."

He nodded. "What?"

"You won't leave," she said. "Promise me you'll stay. I've been too lonely, it's been too long." She turned her face away as though she were afraid to look at him. "Don't make me say it."

Snape found the image of Lily's green eyes in his mind, took one long last look, and let go. Now he stared into eyes the colour of moonlight on water. "I will," he said, and fleetingly touched her face. "I will. But now you have to prepare. He will be here soon."

"If this doesn't work –"

"It will work." He had already turned away. He couldn't bear to look at her and know she would soon be seducing another man. He had never met Griswold Grindelwald personally, but he hated him. Hated him with a passion that superseded common sense completely. If she didn't go, he was going to lose his mind.

Snape glanced over his shoulder and saw only an empty room. She was gone. Trembling, he sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

* * *

><p>Anaia lit the incense – mallowsweet and sage – carefully with a spark from her wand. She fanned it gently, inhaling the pleasant scent, and then leaned over to turn the taps for hot water. Her heart was racing. "I thought perhaps you would like a bath."<p>

Grindelwald was eyeing her. "That sounds sublime. You will of course be joining me." It was not a question.

"Of course, once I see that you are settled." She forced herself to look at him as though entranced as he disrobed, at the miles of sun-kissed golden skin he revealed. He was unusually tall, and he really was a good-looking man – almost beautiful – but Anaia could find nothing to like about him. She didn't admire his beauty, she wasn't impressed by his intelligence, she was bored by his ambition.

"Like what you see?" He took her hands, spread them across his chest, moved them downward.

She pulled her hands from his grasp and slid them around his waist, scratching lightly at the small of his back before sinking her nails briefly into his buttocks. "I do like what I see," she said, and gestured to the hot water.

Grindelwald got into the tub. It was large enough so he could stretch out his legs. "I'm settled," he said, one hand drifting down her neck in search of her chest. "Won't you come in?"

She slapped away his hand, then raised it to her lips and sucked one fingertip. "Patience," she whispered, and reached for a small vial. "I have gone to great lengths to make today special."

"Really?" He sat back, watching as she carefully put three drops of the red mixture in the bathtub. "What is that?"

"Herbal infusion," she said. "It is meant to arouse you."

"I am aroused," he told her, reaching for her hand.

"I doubt you not." Anaia slid her index finger into her mouth suggestively, and then leaned forward to kiss him. It was a deep, intense kiss, and it took a great deal of her self-control not to scream. "Now," she said. "Patience."

Grindelwald watched her, not knowing that the herbal infusion she had put in the bathwater was really a combination of manticore venom, basilisk blood, and phoenix blood, and that the reason she had sucked her finger was to get the banshee eyelashes into her mouth so she could transfer them to his.

She lifted a decanter containing a small amount of wine, and began to pour it into a glass. Some spilled, running down the side of the glass and into the water. "Merlin," she muttered, and Vanished it, plucking a new full decanter from midair. "You pour, my love. You make my hands unsteady."

With an infuriating smirk, he complied, filling a glass for each of them. "To my future wife," he said, and drained it.

In the spilled wine, chimaera and thestral blood. In the drunk wine, which he always drank too quickly to taste, belladonna.

"Now," Anaia said, rolling up her sleeves, "I think it is time to make sure you are clean."

Grindelwald caught her face in his hand. His cheeks looked flushed, the stimulating effect of the manticore venom in the water. "I tire of your games."

"I thought you wanted my hands on you," she said demurely, working the soap into a lather. She felt small particles in the froth; ground kelpie mane.

He pursed his lips. "I do."

"Well, then." She held up her soapy hands. "May I?"

"I want you naked."

Anaia sighed. "I'm not going to undress with soapy hands."

"Then I'll do it." He leaned over the side of the tub, picked up his wand, and tapped her shoulder. Her robes unraveled out of existence, and there was no mistaking the hunger in his eyes. "Get in."

"Women need more stimulation than men," she said, arching away from his touch. "You should be patient. Besides, you'll enjoy this."

Grindelwald allowed her to soap his back, his chest. When her hands began to slip down his stomach, a smile crossed his face. "You're right," he murmured. "I do enjoy this."

Anaia spared a swift glance at the clock. She had little more than fifteen minutes left to add the final four ingredients. "Tell me something," she said, as her fingers did unspeakable things. "Do you like caviar? It's a Muggle delicacy, but I find it quite satisfying."

His eyes flickered open. "I like anything you deign to give me," he groaned.

She smiled. It was the answer she had wanted. "Then," she said, withdrawing her hands from beneath the water and ignoring his hiss of displeasure, "I ask only that you bear with me a little longer, and you shall have what you desire." When the petulant anger sparked in his eyes, she touched a finger to his lips. "I have chosen a date, my love. Patience."

Turning away, she lifted a small tube of unicorn blood. "Muggles are so inventive. This is a topical ointment meant to swell one's lips." She touched it to her mouth, trying not to be too messy. "It adds colour as well, of course."

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow. "Foolishness."

She gave a shrug. "Ah well."

"I shall remove it for you," he said, and covered her mouth with his. Anaia bade herself be still, and tried to respond as though she liked the feel of his kiss. "Sweet," he murmured. "Still nothing better than what we wizards can invent."

She bit his lip, then drew back. "Will you try the caviar, then?" She picked up the small bowl of caviar, into which she had mixed toad eyes. "It's fish eggs." She scooped up a handful with her fingertips, and let the spiked caviar fall into his mouth.

Grindelwald licked her fingers. "Not bad. I've tasted far better things."

"You could give a girl a complex with comments like that," she tittered, and leaned forward to kiss his neck, biting it, leaving marks that didn't come close to displaying the strength of her revulsion for him.

He hissed suddenly, and pulled her head back. "What was that?"

Anaia touched the small cut on his neck. It was a barely visible thing, but there was a tiny trickle of blood running from it. "I'm sorry, that must've been my earring." She detached her earrings, one made from petrified wood, the other, the one that had hurt him, from petrified lethifold. "I can make it better."

"I'm sure you can," he said. "No more props. No more...distractions." His hand sought her breast, and found it. "Get in."

"But of course," she replied, and as she climbed into the tub, knocked an odd-looking comb onto his chest. The comb, it turns out, was made from nundu claw.

Grindelwald let out an inhuman scream, and his skin began to burn. He thrashed in the water, splashing most of it out of the tub, smoke rising from his flailing body, and with a wet bang, he was nothing. Floating in what remained of the water was an unknowable slurry. He was dead. It was almost anticlimactic.

Anaia, who was long out of the tub by this time, sank to the floor, pulling robes out of the air and wrapping them around her. Tears were streaming down her face. She felt filthy; she could still feel Grindelwald's touch crawling on her. She scratched at her skin, weeping.

The door flew open, and Snape was on his knees beside her. "Don't scratch, don't scratch." He lifted her in his arms – she seemed to weigh nothing at all – and Apparated from the west wing bathroom straight into the east.

He didn't even bother to see if she could stand, but he slid into the water, pulling the robes off her. She scrubbed at her skin relentlessly, ducking her head under the water as though she wanted to wash the memory from her eyes. She wouldn't speak. All she did was cry.

Snape held her when she was too weak to stand, cradling her body against his chest, and carried her out of the water and into her bedroom. The bed had already turned itself down, so he laid her on the sheets, pulled the cover over her, and sat at the foot of the bed to wait.

She hiccupped. "He's gone."

"I know."

"It was the _worst_."

"Did he touch you?"

Even in her emotional state, Anaia looked surprised at the sheer anger in his voice. "Of course he did. That was the whole point of it." She wiped her face, curled into a fetal position. "Even worse, I had to touch him."

Snape's eyelids fell shut over eyes that burned with fury. "It's over," he said softly. "Rastalan is all right, I managed to put him mostly back together. He'll have a few scars, but in time those will disappear."

"God, he must hate me," came the miserable response.

"He doesn't hate you. He knows why he had to do it, and it's been done. He is satisfied at the part he was able to play." Snape laid his hand tentatively on her calf over the cover, and when she didn't scream or shake it off, left it there. "Will you be all right?"

"I..." Anaia paused, wiped her face again, and looked right into his eyes. His heart skipped a beat. "Stay."

One word. One word and she had just succeeded in turning him into a slack-jawed idiot. "Stay?" he repeated.

"Yes." She nodded to the expanse of bed next to her. "Stay."

Snape hesitated only a moment before stretching out beside her. Her hair smelled like the incense she had been burning. He touched it experimentally.

Anaia was not that shy. She reached back for his wrist, and dragged his arm over her, pulling him so that he leaned against her back. She was naked under the covers; he lay fully clothed on top of them. After a moment, she slid his hand under the covers where it came into searing contact with the bare skin of her stomach. She gripped his wrist, holding it there.

"I trust you," she whispered.

For a moment he was overwhelmed, and then he leaned his forehead against her shoulder. "I will not betray your trust," he said.

But Anaia was already asleep.


End file.
